Robert Latham

Robert Latham was an Albany, New York Democratic political operative. In January 1865, he was hired by William H. Seward to help convince several Democrats to support the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Latham offered patronage jobs to several lame-duck Democrats who had been voted out of the US House of Representatives, and he convinced President Abraham Lincoln to lie about the Hampton Roads Conference to the US Congress to prevent the Radical Republicans from rebelling.